Upcycled Robots

Robots walk among us, upcycled robots that is. French artist Gille Monte has a passion for creating upcycled robots from found metallic materials. We love the retro style of Monte’s creations, they’re like something out of the Jetsons! Read on as we ask Gille Monte about his personal process of making robots.

When Gille Monte wrote to us to share his upcycled robots, we were intrigued by the cool design aesthetic and various mixed metals used. We feature many different kinds of upcyclers and artists on Upcycle That, but happen to have a soft spot for robot creators. It seems like some people just have a special knack for creating them. So we had to ask Monte, what does it take to create upcycled robots?

Monte says while not a welder, he’s always loved tinkering with metallic objects. He loves giving abandoned objects a second life and is a self taught robot creator. For inspiration Monte looks to the shape and appearance of the found object. For instance he will start with a metal box, fire extinguisher, or electric casing and consider it as the body of a robot it could become. From there he begins to visualize a robot.

2 years ago Monte started his blog, documenting the process of creating upcycled robots. For each robot Monte makes he also includes a fantastical imaginary story about it’s origin. The robot above is supported by the story of Pandora’s box.

To find his metallic bits and bobs Monte looks in the trash, secondhand shops and is gifted many worn parts from family and friends. When he does buy pieces Monte says they are very inexpensive:

The raw material doesn’t cost me a lot, second-hand flatware is sold for almost nothing.

Monte says for him, the most gratifying part of the process is giving a second life to objects that would otherwise have been wasted. We have to agree, that’s one of our favourite parts of upcycling as well.